I'd do anything you asked
by NalaStormhunter
Summary: This is the first part of a long series following the adventures of the Mystic. In this one, the Mystic loses everything
1. Prologue

"_Madame President, get down!" She shouted; throwing herself on top of the blonde woman as the explosion rocked the ground where they had been standing and showered them with burning debris. The Mystic bit her lip to keep from screaming in agony as it burned and cut her. If she made it back to the TARDISes before regenerating, she would consider her family luck holding. She rolled off her friend with a groan. Propping herself up on an elbow, she assessed the injured President. "Romana? President Romana?" There was no answer, even when she called louder. She wasn't dead, since she hadn't started regenerating, and they hadn't been hit with the extermination beams of the Daleks yet. Rolling her eyes, the Mystic placed her lips practically in the ear canal of the President and yelled, "FRED!"_

_Romanadvoratrelundar III, President of the Gallifreyian Council and ruler of their people opened one eye and still managed to glare at the head of her secret service. "I swear," she said, barely above a whisper, "You and your brother are absolutely horrid."_

_The Mystic winced as her mind flashed to her soon to be dead brother as he raced to end this War once and for all and blow them all out of the sky. "Romana, we don't have much time. He'll be sending the suns into supernova soon, and if we don't get out of here, then the Children of Time will be lost forever, like Gallifrey, like us. So come on, now is not the time to take a nap!" She felt something shoved into her hand, and looking down, she saw a bit of shiny metal in her hand: a key. "What's this?" She asked rather dumbly._

_Romana found it hard to speak, but finally said, "It's my TARDIS key. Lorelei, don't argue with me on this one. I am not going to make it. Oh, I could possibly regenerate, but if you don't leave now, you're dooming not only us, but those war orphans whose Time Lord Consciousness we vowed to protect. You have to go alone. I'll buy you the time you need to get out of here and to safety before Theta sends the final strike."_

_The Mystic winced as another explosion went off nearby. Romana was serious. She only called her Lorelei when she was serious. Still, she shook her head. "No, Fred," she said, pushing the key back into her friend's hand, "You go, I'll hold them off. I'm the bodyguard. This is my job. To give my life for you. And I intend to do so. So go." She stood to face the approaching Daleks. "I should be able to give you five minutes, ten minutes at the most, so you'll have to move fast." As she moved to aim her weapon, the Mystic found herself pulled down to the ground again with oomph of escaping air._

_"I would never make it to the TARDIS without regenerating first. That would leave me too vulnerable. You're injuries will give you longer. At least long enough to get inside before you regenerate. You once said that you would do anything for me, all I had to do was ask. Remember that?"_

_She nodded, tears falling unchecked from her eyes as she whispered. "I remember, but Fred, please, please, don't. Don't ask me this, please."_

_"I am asking you this, Lorelei. Leave me here. Save the lost Children of Time. Be Fantastic, for me, for Theta." She stood up this time. "Now go. Run!"_

_And the Mystic ran. She never could say no to when her best friend asked her to do something. Even if it meant she would never see her again. When she reached the hill where the TARDISes were, she risked one final look. It was a mistake, she realized as she watched Romana exterminated by a Dalek. The one weapon that could kill a Time Lord or Lady, permanently, and now her best friend was dead. She didn't so much run as was exploded into the former President's TARDIS. The doors closed and the TARDIS went into the Vortex as her new owner burned and regenerated._


	2. Chapter One

Mystic woke in the Zero Room. She didn't remember much after she had gotten the TARDIS into the Vortex, but she wasn't surprised to find she had made it to the Zero Room. After that regeneration, she felt lucky she hadn't suffered a Neural Implosion. "I hate dodgy regenerations," she muttered. She shouldn't be too surprised. She and Theta never had happy, nice, easy regenerations like other Time Lords and Ladies, but that was only natural. They weren't fully Gallifreyian. Their mother was human: a very long-lived human. The age difference between herself and her older brother proved that. Father never could explain why Mother managed to live two hundred years longer than any normal human, but there it was. And while their parents loved each other and loved their children, their decision had left Theta and Lorelei very lonely children. Theirs was a society of stuck up, arrogant people, unwilling to change, and they made the Sigma family outcasts. Theta was more of the rebel, so where Lorelei tried to fit in, and eventually made friends with the daughter of a very influential family, he swanned off with his granddaughter Susan, who took after Theta—she always refused to call him Doctor—more than either of her parents. "Oooh, this must have been a baddy," she said aloud, suddenly, "I'm reminiscing about Mum and Dad."

She was floating in mid air, and with a thought, her new feet were touching down on the floor of the TARDIS. The Mystic stretched her arms over her head, leaning backwards until her back gave a satisfying 'pop.' "All right, old girl," she said, stroking the wall of the TARDIS lovingly, "how long was I out?" A number appeared in her mind. It was clear to her then that Romana must have been planning for every eventuality, for the TARDIS recognized her as the pilot of the ship. "Three days. Well, I've had worse. First regeneration, actually, I think I was out for a week. Romana told me that Theta never left my side the whole time, he was so worried I wouldn't pull through it at all…oh gods." And that's when she realized the real reason she was trying to remember everything. She couldn't feel them. All her life, she could feel her people in the back of her mind, their low level telepathy keeping them all connected. And now there was nothing. Just a dreadful emptiness where there had always been life, and that brought tears to the Mystic's eyes. "He did it." She murmured, "And now I'm the last of our people. And you, you're the last TARDIS. We're alone, you and I." A thought occurred to her; she raced up to the console room.

Reaching the Console, she started pressing buttons, flinging numbers about in the screen. 

She muttered to herself. "Come on, come on, come on. Tell me their deaths were not in vain." Pressing one final key, the Mystic stood back, and waiting as the TARDIS scanned for Daleks. She paced the console. _Duly noted, _she thought as she walked back to check the screen, then wandered off again as the old girl continued to scan the universe, _this body does not like to hold still._ Come to think of it, she didn't know much about her new form. Just from relations to the door frame of the TARDIS, she knew she was just under average height, and definitely skinnier than the last body. Her clothes hung down like a little girl playing dress up, and from the sound of her own voice, she sounded like she had grown up in Glasgow, Scotland, on Earth. "So, how long is this scan going to take?" Another figure popped into her head. "Four hours, good. Plenty of time for me to find some clothes that fit and see what I look like now. Let me know when it's done, ole girl." She smiled at the reassuring hum inside her head as she ran off to find the wardrobe.

As she wandered the corridors, she suddenly had a thought that perhaps Romana had not had time to add clothes to the TARDIS before they made their escape. Well, tried to make their escape. Mystic pushed those thoughts out of her head. Time to move on, as always, Romana and Theta would not want her sitting around wallowing in grief. It just was not their way, and it wasn't hers either.

Upon reaching the wardrobe, Mystic sighed in relief. All seven floors of the wardrobe were bursting with clothes. Somewhere in that collection would be a style that would go with this new body, and untested personality. The first thing she did was look in the mirror. She was still ginger. She didn't know why she was relieved to be still ginger. The one person she could take digs at because of hair colour was gone. Her eyes were hazel this time, instead of blue, and were closer set in her face. She also looked much younger. No older than twenty two, she thought. There was a small splash of freckles on her face and across her nose, and when she smiled, there were dimples. She looked down, "Oh, it seems my height is not the only thing that has shrunk." She had curves, but they were barely noticeable. Not much to show off; still, attractive, in that young, reckless way of the Sigma children. It shone through her face, even when she was tying to hide it, and it would always be a reminder of where she had come from.

And although the regeneration had left her body clean, it had done nothing for her battle garb, or what was left of it. The black bulletproof material was not just hanging off because it 

was too big. It was hanging off of her because there was little of it left. Shrugging out of the rags, she reached for a dressing gown that was hanging conveniently by the mirror. "Thanks, ole girl," she murmured, slipping into the robe. The next thing she did was kick off the combat boots she wore on her feet and wriggle her new toes experimentally. It felt good to get out of those boots. It was a symbolic stripping away of the War from her body, from her life.

She wandered through the clothes, sometimes just looking and remembering, a hat here, a scarf there, old things that they had worn so many years ago as they gallivanted through space and time. Finally Mystic settled on what she felt was right for her. The first thing she found was a nice pair of skin tight black leather trousers. They were almost leggings, they were so tight. Not too far from the trousers, she found a little off the shoulder navy blue and white striped blouse. It almost reminded her of something Susan would wear. It definitely felt like something she would wear. She threw the shirt over her shoulder with the leggings, and continued on to the next floor.

On thing she and Theta had in common was that each incarnation had a look. Theta's had ranged from the completely absurd to the rather mundane. Sometimes the outfit changed not at all, but other times the whole ensemble changed. Sometimes there was just one piece that switched out; and Mystic found the piece she would be switching out. She grabbed several mini skirts from the rack and added them to the stack. She knew that once the TARDIS figured out that this was what she wanted, her closet would fill with these clothes, copies of the shirt and the trousers, and skirts in all colours. Peeling off the dressing gown, she pulled on the trousers and blouse before looking at the skirts. She chose a violet one for her first skirt. "Now, I just need some stylish yet practical footwear." That was one room over, and so she grabbed the skirts, and moved on next door.

This room was only one floor, but it was fairly deep, and stacked floor to ceiling in shoes. She wandered thought the stacks, looking for the perfect shoes. She almost went with the trainers, but decided they just didn't fit the look she had going. What she needed were a good pair of clunky heeled boots. As she turned the corner, she smiled. Oh, Romana's TARDIS was good. This row was nothing but chunky heeled Armani half calf boots. Tossing the skirts to the side, Mystic sat down and pulled the boots onto her feet. She leaped to her feet and was about to check out the complete ensemble in the mirror when the TARDIS hummed in her mind. The 

scan was done. Leaving the skirts on the floor, Mystic ran toward the console room of her ship.

The console room hummed with the sounds of the engines as they drifted in the Vortex. The screen with the information Mystic had requested blinked. The Time Lady stood in the door frame, afraid to approach that blinking screen. What if this had all been for naught? The Time Lords died, and the Daleks lived on. Their deaths would have been in vain, and who would be left to carry on the battle? Just her. And who was she to be able to wipe out the Daleks? The Last of the Time Ladies, and she just didn't think that was enough. She felt like a child again as she walked up to the screen. She felt eight years old again, walking to the great Schism and to peer into the Vortex of time and Space. Biting her lip, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and stepped over to the screen.

She didn't know how long she stood in front of the screen, eyes closed tight. Looking had a sort of finality to it. One way or another, the Time War was over, and she hoped by just not looking, she could pretend it wasn't. She could pretend that her home hadn't just been blown out of the sky, and that they were all still alive, still waiting for her. An encouraging nudge from the TARDIS made her open her eyes, and the Mystic sighed. The Time Lords were dead, and Gallifrey burned, but the Daleks had been wiped out of the sky, every last stinking one of them.

Mystic sat down in the command chair, staring at the monitor as they drifted through the Vortex. She reached over quickly and set the controls to random. Let the TARDIS decide where and when they went. The whirling pattern of space and time soothed her even as her hearts broke. Tears she had been fighting for the past four hours came unchecked. She rested her head in her hands, and finally mourned for her family, her friends, her home, her world.


End file.
